Power generating first

Busselton residents could be forgiven for thinking a spaceship landed on the foreshore this week.

The unusual object, situated to the west of the jetty, was a cutting-edge solar-film and wind-generated system used to make power.

Busselton Shire Council major projects manager Paul Crewe said the council was trialling the system as one way of future-proofing its foreshore development through sustainable design.

“The combination of solar-film and wind-generated power systems haven’t been used elsewhere in Western Australia, so it is a bit of a first,” he said.

Mr Crewe said the system would be used to generate power for LED lights and bollards along the foreshore and could potentially be used to light barbecue shelters and toilets as well as feed back into the grid.

“The trial pole, installed on Wednesday, is connected to a computer which will tell us how much power the system is generating and therefore how much infrastructure it can support.”